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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27607526">Hunger</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984'>Miri1984</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Wilde Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cooking, Gen, Japan Gap, hunger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:55:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,290</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27607526</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Wilde Week Day 3: Feasts | Hunger | Treats</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Zolf Smith &amp; Oscar Wilde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Wilde Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015986</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>A Wilde Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hunger</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Zolf doesn’t like him in the kitchen. It’s an odd thing to get used to, once they reach an inn, because before they managed to get to Japan he’d never shown any real interest in cooking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s difficult, Oscar supposes, to show an interest in cooking when all your meals are dried jerky and water or game caught on the trail or ship cooked rations, but Oscar feels like something of a failure as an intelligence agent the first time he comes upon Zolf in the kitchen of the inn, in earnest one sided conversation with Ryu about how precisely each part of it works.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you planning on being a chef for us, Mr Smith?” he asks, after he has to step in to translate some of the more esoteric instructions the innkeeper wants to give Zolf regarding his stove. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Zolf says, simply and Oscar raises an eyebrow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I had no idea you had culinary aspirations.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did a stint in the galley, when I was in the navy,” Zolf says. “It’s a skill everyone should have.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everyone?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zolf gives him a withering look and Oscar remembers, with a twinge of guilt, the last time he attempted to cook something for himself. Gods it would have been years ago, when he was living with Bosie, some sort of dream of domesticity that collapsed in a flurry of flour and laughter and afterwards, messy, delightful sex on the floor of said kitchen, made all the better for knowing exactly how much his father would hate it and yet would never know. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, made all the more guilt-worthy in retrospect when Oscar remembers they’d done nothing to clean it afterwards - the flour and the eggs and the scattered clothing and broken crockery - that was something the servants dealt with, in the Douglas household, and Bosie had outright laughed in his face when Oscar had suggested they do it themselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Copper for your thoughts?” Zolf says and Oscar blinks, then leers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh they’re far too lewd for just a copper, Mr Smith,” he says, airily. “I look forward to your creations,” he says, when Zolf’s eyebrow raises and his green eyes turn sharp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>#</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Food is fuel, these days. It’s been years since Oscar has had the opportunity to nibble at canapes and sip champagne, the last true </span>
  <em>
    <span>proper </span>
  </em>
  <span>meal he’d had, he thinks, would have been with Bertie in London, the Ritz, for all its glamour, couldn’t match the food in Paris, but Oscar hadn’t stinted, not when Bertie was paying, not when Bertie had focused so intensely on the play of Oscar’s lips as he slipped morsels between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That meal had been a performance rather than an action taken to sustain biological function. A performance - much as the biological function that followed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Since then, food has been fuel, and so Oscar doesn’t think of the small interlude in the inn’s kitchen, at least not until an evening nearly a week later. Oscar has reached an impasse in the current assignment he has from Curie. He’s still their best at cyphers, and so she still sends him work from time to time, when the best in Cairo have failed. He enjoys it, in the abstract, bending patterns to his will, but this one is particularly tricky and the dull ache behind his eyes is promising to become a full blown headache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ignores it, as he is wont to do these days. What he can’t ignore, though, is the smell. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t quite know when he started to smell it. Possibly around noon, although time is difficult to tell in the grey light of near constant rain but there is a point where he finds himself humming a tune under his breath, and it’s a tune he hasn’t sung since he left Ireland, a tune his mother used to sing before mealtimes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he takes a deep breath, and realises the smell is rich, and full, the smell of meat left to stew for the correct amount of time, the right combination of herbs and red wine, the most delicious amalgamation of vegetables and meat and time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels a little uncharitable, because the smells from the kitchen before now have also been delicious. Ryu is an exemplary cook, and his noodles, his rice and meat, his dumplings, his soup, have all done a lot to take the edge off the aching emptiness in Oscar’s stomach, the weeks of living off restoration potions and determination.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This smells like </span>
  <em>
    <span>home.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And that needs some unpacking, because Oscar Wilde hasn’t called anywhere home since he was twelve years old.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts down his pen and presses at his eyes, pretending he is not sucking in deep breathes through his nose. His mouth is watering. The words on the page in front of him swim in and out of focus and his stomach gives a ridiculously loud growl.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets up and wanders down to the kitchen. At the doorway he sees Zolf, wreathed in steam, humming under his breath as he stirs. There are potatoes peeled, sitting on the counter, but the smell - the rich, meaty smell - is coming from a gigantic pot simmering on the stovetop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zolf looks utterly at home here, moving with confidence and surety. The countertop is a little too tall for him and Oscar thinks he should get him a stool. He dips a ladle into the mixture on the stove and frowns, reaching up to a shelf for some spices. Oscar, without thinking, moves to get them for him, and their hands brush on the way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zolf startles a little, then looks up at him. “Not the sage,” he says, and points to a packet of dried leaves. “That one, please.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oscar gets it for him and watches as Zolf scatters two or three of them into the stew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s cooking?” Oscar asks and Zolf gives him a </span>
  <em>
    <span>look.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stew,” he says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mmmm,” Oscar hums and looks into the pot, reaching out a finger to dip in it that gets slapped away. “Ouch.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing here, Wilde?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Smells good,” Oscar says, ignoring the implied </span>
  <em>
    <span>go away </span>
  </em>
  <span>in that question.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course it does.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When will it be done?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When I can concentrate on getting it done. Don’t you have work to do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine. I’ll let you get on with it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>#</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they’ve finished eating, Oscar pushes back his bowl and lets out a satisfied sigh. Across the table, Zolf is watching him, expression guarded. “You liked that then,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Zolf it was absolutely delicious. If I’d known you were so talented in the kitchen I would have snagged you to be my personal chef in London rather than letting you run around with a band of mercenaries destroying the world's economy. History," he lets out a delicate burp, covering it with his hand, "May have been completely rewritten.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah well. Can’t save the world with beef stew,” he has turned a delightful shade of pink at Oscar’s praise. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a good look on him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You might be able to save <em>me,</em> though,” Oscar says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Haven’t seen you eat that much since we got here,” Zolf says. “You need to keep you strength up, same as the rest of us, Wilde.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I never took you for the mothering type, Mr Smith.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You bring out the worst in me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or the best.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oscar is smiling at him, now, unguarded, and Zolf’s eyes are twinkling in response. The headache that had been pressing in on him for hours has faded, he feels calm, at peace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels </span>
  <em>
    <span>home.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you, Zolf,” he says. “Now. Let me clean this up for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oscar nods, and stands, and they begin to work together.</span>
</p>
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